Being single at Christmas can feel like the end of the world, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Around this time last year, I covered a series in handling breakups called "Shaking Off The Year of the Bad Relationship". Today's guest blogger is Rosie from York, England and she does a great job in learning her lesson from a holiday breakup that happened to her. *You can send me your articles for guest blogger consideration to myrelationshiplessons@gmail.com*
I was at a university in the UK, and in the eighth month of a relationship with a
guy we’ll call Dan (because that was his name). Despite living 200 miles
apart, we’d managed to keep our long-distance relationship going. As
Christmas loomed, we started discussing presents, and Dan asked for the
most tuneless instrument known to man, a didgeridoo (a long wooden horn almost the length of your entire body, that bellows out the most God awful sound). As an impoverished
student, a didgeridoo would cost a fair chunk of my loan to buy. But
love being blind – and apparently deaf, I bought it. I lovingly wrapped
it in about ten sheets of paper, then hauled it home on the train from
York to Essex. But ten days before Christmas, Dan came round to my house and
casually told me ‘it wasn’t working’. I was pretty sure there were rules
somewhere against festive dumping, but apparently he hadn’t read them. I
was left with not just a broken heart, but a 4 foot Aboriginal instrument
to get rid of (not something you can easily pawn off).
Being dumped when everyone else is cosily coupled up hurts more than
at any other time of year. At least Valentine’s Day is just a single
day, not an entire season. Christmas is so family and
relationship orientated, there are lots more things around reminding you
about being together, plus it’s likely you would've made plans which had to be changed, so you suffer a physical loss as well as an emotional one. But while it might seem kinder to keep quiet until the tree’s down,
Christmas is renowned for testing even the strongest of couples. Lots of
people split up around Christmas, and as the end of the year approaches, it puts pressure on
couples to think about where they’re headed. It’s only natural to
start mulling over your plans for the future. On top of that, as the
party season gets underway, people can feel burnt out, and all that
drinking can lead to heated arguments or dangerous liaisons. All of
which spell disaster if your relationship isn’t rock-solid.
Back to the story. I asked
Dan for the sake of research for this article of course, why he’d chosen Christmas to dump me. “I thought it was better to do
it when you were at home with family and friends” he says. “And I
wanted to give you as much time before you went back to the university as
possible.” All of which makes sense, but with Christmas being all about togetherness, it can feel like the
endless repeats of Love Actually are mocking your suddenly-single
status. Even worse, unlike other times of year, your girlfriends aren’t
always on hand to help you pick up the pieces. It is possible to turn being suddenly
single to your advantage, especially at Christmas. You can take the
festive spirit as a reminder of the split, or as a reminder of all the
other people who care for you. Christmas is a time of extra
connection with people you love, followed swiftly by the new year, which
is all about renewal. You can use the time in between to look at the
relationship which has ended and decide what went wrong.
A 31 year old single mother I know went even
further, using a festive break-up to turn her life around. She’d been
with her boyfriend for three and a half years when they split up two weeks
before Christmas. Although it was her who made the decision to leave,
it was still very difficult. But she decided to use the time to
be romantic towards herself. Two days before Christmas she threw a huge
dinner with friends, and bought herself some presents. She then used her
new-found freedom to move to London, which lead to a book deal. She felt
wounded at the time, but since then her life has totally changed. As for me? I resisted the urge to burn Dan’s didgeridoo and instead, I
marched to his house, thrusted it into his hands with a very curt "I
think this is yours", and marched off again. Then I discovered the best
thing about being suddenly single at Christmas was eating all the turkey I liked, safe in the knowledge that no one would be
seeing me naked until well into the new year.
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